Archaeologists Uncover Paleoindian Habitation in Upland Area of Tennessee
This is an older article but I thought some here (like me) would still find it of interest. 
Map of the Upper Cumberland Plateau:
Popular Archaeology
Archaeologists Uncover Paleoindian Habitation in Upland Area of Tennessee
Wed, Oct 08, 2014
Upland areas, far from the more accommodating lowland environments featuring streams, lakes and valleys, have not been as comparatively rich in yielding evidence for early Native American, or Paleoindian, habitation—at least in terms of permanent, ongoing settlement bases. But archaeological excavations at a rock shelter in the Upper Cumberland Plateau (UCP) of Tennessee are revealing finds that could show otherwise.
"At Rock Creek Mortar Shelter on the UCP, we have recorded a more or less continuous record of human occupation from at least the end of the Pleistocene around 11,500 years ago to about AD 1000," reports Jay Franklin, Associate Professor of Archaeology at East Tennessee University and colleagues. It is unusual because, as they report, "upland areas do not typically fit into conventional models of human settlement, except in cases where they are invoked as marginal areas used for hunting and gathering forays by ancient peoples only to return to their lowland homes."*
Franklin has been conducting archaeological research in the UCP for well over a decade. At an elevation as much as 1,000 feet above the Tennessee River Valley, it comprises part of a larger region of Appalachia historically known as the "Great Wilderness", a cultural backwater. But, for Franklin, this "could not be farther from the truth. Prehistoric Native Americans used and occupied these rock shelters and caves for 12,000 years."*
From within the shelter, Franklin and his team recovered more than a dozen blades from deposits about 1.25 - 2 meters below the surface. They date them to the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods. Examination of the blades has provided some clues to reconstructing the prehistoric scenario at the location. "A few of the well made blades would be at home in European Late & Epi-Paleolithic assemblages, while a few are poorly executed," report Franklin and colleagues. "This suggests a family group as opposed to simply a group of male hunters. It may have been that older, skilled knappers were teaching younger novices to make blades on site. It may also be that these earliest inhabitants of the UCP were coping with the constraints of using the small rounded local cobbles of Monteagle Chert for blade production (as opposed to large tabular cherts encountered in the lower Tennessee River drainage)." ....
MORE at http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2013/article/archaeologists-uncover-paleoindian-habitation-in-upland-area-of-tennessee
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There's a really good book written on this topic and I'd love to have a copy myself but the cost is prohibitive. Portions of it are available for reading at the google online library but most of the images and blocks of pages are not available for viewing. 
I would imagine copies are available at most Appalachian college libraries.
Archaeology of the Appalachian Highlands
Lynne P. Sullivan, Susan C. Prezzano
Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2001
Stretching from New England to northern Alabama, the Appalachian mountain chain forms not only a major geographical feature of the eastern United States but was also the setting for thousands of years of Native American cultural development. Like the more recent inhabitants of these mountains, the ancient highlanders developed vibrant and diverse traditions, and these are accessible now only through archaeological research.
This book is the first effort to bring together research on the archaeology of this entire region. The contributors explore how Appalachian peoples throughout prehistory met the challenges of, and were shaped by, their mountainous setting. Juxtaposing work on the highland portions of the Northeast, the Southeast, and fringes of the Mid-Atlantic, the book explicitly overturns the traditional manner of dividing North American archaeology from east to west, thus inviting scholarly communication along a little-worn intellectual corridor that ironically corresponds to the Great Warrior Path, a well-worn Native American network.
Some essays present current research on geographic features such as ridges, rises, and caves that either were used by prehistoric peoples or that affect archeological site formation. A second set of chapters provides synopses of cultural developments in distinctive Appalachian subregions. The latter are organized into general time periods with each section covering northern, southern, and intermediate subregions, a scheme that offers a sense of intraregional trends at different points in time.
The individual essays in this volume are valuable in themselves as reports on state-of-the-art research. Taken together, they portray the breadth andvitality of archaeological study in Appalachia.